The present invention relates generally to a loop heat pipe, and more particularly to an evaporator of the loop heat pipe.
A loop heat pipe is a heat exchange system, wherein both the liquid and gas phases of the working fluid flow along the same direction. The working principle of the loop heat pipe is similar to that of the conventional heat pipe. However, the loop heat pipe does not comprise the drawback that the liquid phase of the working fluid flows along a direction opposite to that of the gas working fluid. Therefore, the performance of the loop heat pipe is much better than that of the conventional heat pipe.
One conventional loop heat pipe is disclosed in Taiwanese Patent Application No. 92130196, entitled “method for manufacturing evaporator of loop heat pipe.” Although the primary subject matter disclosed in this application publication pertains to a method for manufacturing an evaporator of loop heat pipe, one can easily realize by viewing the appended figures that the evaporator of loop heat pipe is configured such that one side thereof is connected to an incoming pipe, while the other side thereof is connected to an outgoing pipe. After the pipes and the evaporator form a loop, it is very difficult to clean, evacuate or exhaust the internal part of the pipes. Therefore, the cleanness and the degree of vacuum of the pipes become uncontrollable, which will affect the performance of heat transfer. In addition, the evaporator of the application publication is composed of two external pipes, which requires an adhesion or a welding procedure to tightly connect the external pipes onto the evaporator. However, the adhesion or the welding procedure requires that the welding torch or the glue gun be surrounding the edge of the two external pipes. In this manner, the loop heat pipe will interfere the welding or the adhesion procedure.
On the other hand, one can use a detachable torch to prevent the interference of the loop heat pipe during the welding procedure using the torch. However, the detachable torch requires additional steps for detaching and assembling the torch, which will largely slow down the production speed. Moreover, one can also use a soldering procedure to replace the welding procedure. However, the melted soldering material can flow into the pipe, which will be absorbed by the capillary structure, thereby clogging the capillary structure.
Accordingly, the inventor of the present invention realized the drawbacks in the conventional art, and developed the present invention that can overcome the drawbacks described above.